This copy is for your personal non-commercial use only. To order presentation-ready copies of Toronto Star content for distribution to colleagues, clients or customers, or inquire about permissions/licensing, please go to: www.TorontoStarReprints.com

Siddiqui: Picking on Muslim women smacks of hypocrisy

I do not like the niqab/burqa. It makes me uncomfortable. But that's not a good enough reason to argue that it be banned or, worse, that those wearing it be denied public services, including education and even health care, as Quebec is proposing.

I do not like the niqab/burqa. It makes me uncomfortable. But that's not a good enough reason to argue that it be banned or, worse, that those wearing it be denied public services, including education and even health care, as Quebec is proposing.

Based on even majority public opinion, a democracy cannot discriminate because of dress – religiously dictated or otherwise. It couldn't do it in the same way that it wouldn't sanction lynching, should the masses be baying for it. The rule of law wouldn't have it.

What if society collectively decided to change the law to permit lynching? It could. But citizens would retain the right to argue that such a law would be an ass.

That's the stage we are at vis-à-vis Quebec's bill on the niqab. Hence the myriad arguments.

• The niqab is just another manifestation of multiculturalism gone mad.

Article Continued Below

No, it is a case of freedom of religion, which includes "the right to show it," as Quebec's own commission on reasonable accommodation said in its 2008 report.

• The duty to accommodate religion is not limitless. Correct.

As stated by the commission, "a request may be rejected if it leads to what the jurists call `undue hardship,' which can take different forms such as unreasonable cost, upsetting an organization's operation, infringing the rights of others, or prejudicing the maintenance of security and public order."

That may have been the case with the niqabi woman in Montreal who was thrown out of two French language classes. She was said to be making excessive demands. She said she was being true to her faith. She went to the Quebec human rights commission.

That's a good way to work through such competing claims. The case, however, is a poor excuse for Jean Charest's legislation.

• The niqab may not be a religious requirement. I agree. So do an overwhelming majority of Muslim women, including observant ones, who do not wear it.

But that does not negate the right of those who believe it is a religious requirement. That a majority of Jews do not wear the kippa, or that many Sikhs do not wear a turban, does not negate the right of those who do.

• It is essential to see the face for the purposes of I.D. documents and security. Absolutely. The state can lay down the law that a niqabi show her face for a passport, driver's license, health card (as the Quebec health board has already held). She should show her face at immigration and customs, etc., or even when collecting her child from daycare. But there are no reported cases of niqabi women objecting to any of that.

• The niqab is "a symbol of oppression," decreed by Islam or the men of the household – father, brother or husband.

Let's assume that it is. Whose business is it to end the practice – that of the state?

Let's say that it is. But she would invoke her freedom of religion, also her freedom of choice of dress. What then?

Would our argument be that we do not recognize her sovereignty, even though we accept the right of a woman to abortion on the basis of just such individual autonomy?

Or would we argue that a niqabi woman is too dumb to decide for herself or is under the sort of severe oppression that we assume she is, without having to prove that she is?

Feminists would have had greater credibility had they also been campaigning against the inferior status of women among Catholics, Hutterites, Orthodox Jews and other faiths.

• The niqab impedes integration. Yes.

Yet the proposed cure may be worse than the disease. Charest's bill, if passed, would isolate them even more.

• The niqab dilutes the secular nature of society – Quebec's, in particular. Not so.

The Constitution recognizes the supremacy of God. The Quebec National Assembly displays the crucifix. Some Quebec municipalities begin meetings with a prayer. Catholic and other churches are given tax breaks.

Fo Niemei, director of the Montreal-based Centre for Research on Race Relations, asks: "Do we withdraw funding for the Jewish General or require that the hospital remove its Jewishness because the state shall not fund or support religious expression?" The niqabi women are not demanding any favours anyway, only their rights.

TO SUM UP: We are witnessing an unholy alliance of leftist feminists, right-wing bigots and Quebec nationalists. That's why Lucien Bouchard, former PQ premier, publicly warned his party last month against playing identity politics, something he said René Lévesque would never have approved of.

Picking on Muslim women smacks of hypocrisy or, worse, the pathology of "bigots and chauvinists who, like bullies, direct their vitriol toward the weak," American academics Sener Akturk and Mujeeb Khan wrote in Turkey's English-language newspaper Zaman in an article headlined How Western Anti-Muslim Bigotry Became Respectable.

The Toronto Star and thestar.com, each property of Toronto Star Newspapers Limited, One Yonge Street, 4th Floor, Toronto, ON, M5E 1E6. You can unsubscribe at any time. Please contact us or see our privacy policy for more information.

More from the Toronto Star & Partners

LOADING

Copyright owned or licensed by Toronto Star Newspapers Limited. All rights reserved. Republication or distribution of this content is expressly prohibited without the prior written consent of Toronto Star Newspapers Limited and/or its licensors. To order copies of Toronto Star articles, please go to: www.TorontoStarReprints.com